This relates to monitoring power usage in a computer or other processor-based device.
Household power consumption continues to increase as the number of electronic devices proliferates. Portable media players, mobile telephones, and personal digital assistants, and other portable electronic devices have batteries that must be charged. Moreover, as users spend more time engaged in on-line activities, personal computers and other fixed electronic devices are being left on for longer periods, and even continually. Some personal computers sometimes are being left on simply to serve as power supplies for the charging of the aforementioned portable devices via connections, such as Universal Serial Bus (“USB”) connections, that provide power in addition to data (rather than charging those devices from the household electric service using their dedicated chargers), even though the power supply of a personal computer is much larger than is needed for such a function, and as such draws much more power than such a function would otherwise demand. As the price of electricity increases, such uses of power can cost users more.